by Liz Carlyle
Esmée returned her gaze to her newspaper. “To suggest what, Aunt Rowena?”
“Oh, never mind!” She snatched up her reticule. “Are you sure, Esmée, that you won’t come along?” she said for the third time. “It is just a fitting, though why Madame Panaut wishes another one, and at such an early hour, I cannot think. But afterward, why, we could go down to Bond Street and look at those slippers you admired last week.”
Esmée laid aside her paper and stood. “Thank you, no,” she said. “Lydia is bringing Sorcha today.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten,” said her ladyship. “Do give the child my love.”
Esmée kissed her aunt’s cheek and saw her to the door. But Lady Tatton’s carriage had scarce disappeared from view before another very familiar carriage came spinning round the square from Upper Brook Street. Lydia was arriving earlier than usual.
Grimond, the butler, had vanished, and Esmée did not ring for him. Instead, she threw open the door herself and went eagerly down the steps. But it was not Lydia who emerged from the carriage with Sorcha in her arms.
“Good morning,” said Alasdair.
“Mae!” screeched Sorcha. “Look! Look! See dis doll? Pretty, see?”
Alasdair smiled dotingly and passed the child to Esmée. “Lydia was indisposed this morning,” he said. “I decided to bring Sorcha myself.”
“So I see,” said Esmée weakly. “Will you come in?”
With Sorcha on her hip, she returned to the morning parlor and offered him a chair. He took it, watching her almost warily with his heavy, hooded eyes. Esmée sat down and settled Sorcha in her lap, a little troubled by how glad she was to see him.
Sorcha, however, was happily babbling about her doll. “See dress, Mae?” said Sorcha. “See dis dress? Got blue dress. She got shoes, too. And pretty hair.”
“Heavens! So many new words!” Esmée kissed the child atop the head, taking care to avoid her injury. “Aye, ’tis a fine, fair doll. Is she new?”
“New,” agreed Sorcha, tugging off one of the doll’s satin slippers. “See stockin’s?”
Alasdair cleared his throat. “I thought it was time she had another,” he interjected. “This one came with an entire wardrobe. Sorcha seems to delight in dressing and undressing her dolls.”
Esmée smiled. “Aye, her fingers are quite nimble now.”
Alasdair cut Esmée an enigmatic glance. “How is it they grow so quickly?” he asked. “Just this week she began speaking in complete sentences.”
Esmée felt her chest suddenly constrict. “Aye ’tis worrisome, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “It seems she was just a wee babe when our mother died. And now I look on her, and I see a little girl. The swiftness of it frightens me.”
Alasdair smiled. “I begin to believe doubt is the curse of every parent,” he answered. “But we must remember that Sorcha is not an eggshell, Esmée. She is tough and resilient. You once said as much.”
Sorcha had the doll’s dress off now. “Shiff, Mae,” she said, flinging the dress into the floor. “See shiff? Take dis off. And drawers. ’Em off, too.”
Esmée gave him a muted smile. “Her vocabulary is growing apace, too,” she remarked. “She seems to have learnt all the words for ladies’ undergarments.”
He lifted one brow and flashed his irrepressible grin. “Ah, well. It was you, was it not, who said one should learn new skills at the feet of a master?”
Esmée looked at him chidingly. “Pray tell me about Lydia. I hope she hasn’t taken the quinsy which is going round Mayfair.”
“Worse, I fear.” Alasdair winced. “A badly sprained wrist.”
“Och! What happened?”
“The imp got away from her yesterday and bolted for the stairs. A tussle ensued, and I fear Lydia came out rather the worse for it.”
Esmée felt a moment of panic. Bolted for the stairs? Oh, Sorcha was too headstrong by half! She could have been injured, too. And poor Lydia! Perhaps she was not so capable of managing the child after all? Esmée did not know whether to feel reassured or worried.
Alasdair read her mind. “Sorcha is a handful, Esmée,” he said quietly. “For you or for Lydia. Indeed, a whole battalion of nurses would find her a challenge. But we cannot swaddle her in cotton wool.”
“Aye, you’re right.” Gently, she touched the child’s wound. “I was relieved when her stitches came out.”
“Dr. Reid feels the scar will not be noticeable when her hair thickens,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Do not worry over that.”
Sorcha had squirmed her way out of Esmée’s lap. She went careening across the carpet to her father, her doll in one hand, its shift in the other. Mere inches from him, however, her little legs stumbled and sent her flying.
In an instant, Alasdair had snatched her up. “Careful, minx!”
He set her on his knee, made a stern face, and gently chided her about the importance of not running in the parlor. Sorcha appeared to listen, her ice-blue eyes fixed on her father’s face, her chubby hand still clutching the half-naked doll. Esmée realized that Alasdair’s response—not to mention his reaction time—had become instinctive. Parental. He had become, somehow, a father, a truth which kept revealing itself in small, subtle ways.
No, she needn’t worry quite so much about Sorcha. But she needed to worry a great deal about herself, and her heart.
His scold finished, Alasdair stroked the fine hair back from Sorcha’s forehead. Sorcha turned and handed him the doll. “Take off,” she ordered. “Take off dis shoe.”
“This one is a little stubborn,” he agreed, gently easing it off.
Sorcha made a happy noise and wiggled her way off his knee. Gathering up her doll and its clothing, she toddled off to a spot beneath the windows which Lady Tatton had designated as her play area. The child pushed the lid from a large wicker basket and began to toss the toys inside it onto the carpet.
“She seems very much at home here,” he remarked.
“Aye, that one never met a stranger,” said Esmée.
For a moment, they watched her in silence. The basket now empty, Sorcha plopped down on her rump and began to play.
Esmée’s gaze remained fixed on Sorcha, but when she spoke, it was to him. “Alasdair,” she said quietly. “Why have you come here?”
For a moment, she thought he mightn’t answer. Indeed, when she looked at him, there was a hint of a challenge in his eye. “Doubtless your aunt will disapprove,” he finally said. “But she is my child, Esmée. I have a right to be with her wherever she goes.”
“My aunt is not at home,” she answered. “And that is not what I asked.”
His gaze faltered slightly. “I wished to give you something,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket. He withdrew a slender box of green velvet and passed it to her. It looked familiar. Uncertainly, Esmée took it.
“Open it,” he said. “Please.”
Curious, Esmée did so. A lustrous strand of pearls shimmered inside. She lifted the clasp, and gasped. It was fashioned of ornate gold and encrusted with six diamonds. The pearls were precisely sized, and good deal larger than the ones she had lost. “Oh, how lovely!” she whispered. “But I cannot accept a gift from you.”
“It is not a gift,” he responded. “It is a replacement. I know it is not the same as having your mother’s pearls back, but it was the best I could do in a hurry.”
“These are exquisite.”
Alasdair smiled a little regretfully. “I meant you to have them, Esmée, that very next morning. But when I got home from the jeweler’s, Lady Tatton was there, and everything seemed to go to hell pretty quickly. I did not think of them again until…until I saw you last night. Your throat was bare, and I thought that you might—ah, well. In any case, they are yours now.”
Esmée felt her cheeks flush. “Och, I cannot!” she insisted, closing the box and thrusting it at him. “I thank you. But I am quite sure Aunt Rowena would say ’tis improper.”
His eyes flashed angrily. “And I am quite
sure I don’t give a damn,” he answered. “Take them, Esmée. Please. I want you to have them. Besides, who will know they aren’t the ones your mother gave you? One strand looks very like another.”
Eyes wide, she shook her head. “I would know,” she answered. “And I know you paid dearly for them, too. They are exceptionally fine, and perfectly matched.”
“And they are yours,” he said firmly.
Esmée laid the box in her lap. “Aye, then,” she said. “I shall put them away for Sorcha.”
“As you wish,” he snapped.
“Alasdair, please,” she answered. “Let us not quarrel.”
He gave a curt nod and let his gaze drift back to Sorcha, who was building a circle of wooden blocks around the naked doll.
Esmée opened the box again, and stared at the pearls, willing away the tears which pressed hotly against the backs of her eyes. Why did his gift make her feel so wretched? There was such an ache in her heart, even as the gift weighed heavily in her hand. Was this all they would ever share? These moments of strained contact? These careful, muted words? A mutual concern for the child they both loved? It did not seem enough. No, not nearly enough.
She closed the box and somehow regained her composure. “I hope Wellings and the rest of the staff go on well?”
“Well enough,” he answered.
“And Mrs. Crosby?” she pressed, her voice surprisingly steady. “I hope she is fully recovered?”
He did not take his eyes from Sorcha. “I have not seen her in a day or two,” he said. “But she seems much restored. Her color is good. She is putting on weight.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said honestly. “I was surprised to see you at Lady Gravenel’s last night. Did you enjoy your evening?”
“Not especially,” he answered. “Yourself?”
“I thought her very hospitable,” said Esmée. “And kind to have invited me.”
At last, he returned his gaze to hers, his eyes cool and unfathomable. “You seem to be invited everywhere,” he remarked. “I gather Lady Tatton has you burning your candle at both ends.”
“Aunt does wish me to go about in society a vast deal,” she agreed. “She wishes me ‘to take,’ whatever that means.”
Again, the strange, muted smile. “I think you know what it means,” said Alasdair. “It means she really is determined to marry you off.”
“Aye, ’tis what’s done in London, is it not?” asked Esmée coolly. “One’s family trots one out like a horse at Tattersall’s, then arranges a match with a suitable gentleman?”
His eyes were hooded, his mouth turned up at one corner in a sardonic smile. “So I’m told,” he answered. “But such worthy fellows rarely travel in my circles. At least the two of you are enlivening what would otherwise be a very dull time of year in Mayfair.”
Esmée’s eyes narrowed. “Faith, Alasdair!” she finally snapped. “What business is it of yours if we set the place afire? You disavow any regard for society. Indeed, you don’t even live here! And yes, Aunt Rowena wishes to see me happy, and to her that means marriage.”
He watched her warily for a moment. “But what does it mean to you, Esmée?” he asked, dropping his voice a degree. “I am just curious, you see. And it is my business, since whoever you marry will become, by extension, a part of Sorcha’s life.”
Esmée wished to quarrel with his logic—and wished to slap the mocking smile from his lips—but she could not quite find grounds for either. Instead, she sprang from her chair and began to pace the room. “You know that I would never wed a man who did not feel an affection for Sorcha,” she insisted, her voice quiet with rage. “Not after all I have been through, so do not dare imply otherwise.”
Alasdair had risen, of course, when she did. He stood now, broad and immutable, by his chair, watching her pace toward him. He no longer looked the part of the handsome, charming bon vivant. His eyes were hard and weary. His mouth was tight, his jaw so firm the muscle in it twitched faintly. At last, he gave a terse nod. “My apologies.”
Too angry to face him, she turned away and crossed the room again. “And yes, I think I ought to be married,” she went on. “You said as much yourself, if you will recall.”
“Ought?” echoed Alasdair, ignoring her remark. “That sounds grim.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared blindly through the window at the wrought-iron fence below. “I mean only that I wish to be settled,” she answered, forcing her voice to sound calm. “I don’t want to be like my mother. I don’t wish for excitement or drama. I just want a life and a family of my own, Alasdair. I wish to belong somewhere, and I never really have. Can you not understand?”
At last, he seemed to hear her; to look beyond himself and his petty frustrations. “I would like to understand,” he said quietly.
Without turning from the window, Esmée lifted her hands. “I have always lived in someone else’s home,” she whispered. “In someone else’s life. I have always lived under the protection of one stepfather after another, in situations where I was tolerated—sometimes even welcomed—but ’tis not the same thing as truly belonging somewhere. You can have no notion, Alasdair, what that is like. It feels as if you are an extra carriage wheel. A dusty corner in an unused room. Useless. And I am sick to death of it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, so close she jumped.
Esmée set her fingertips to her lips, willing herself not to say something even more pathetically stupid. She could feel the heat radiating off his body, he stood so close behind her. She drew in her breath when he set his hand on her shoulder. His touch was heavy, warm, and infinitely comforting, though she knew she should take no comfort from him.
“I am sorry,” he said again. “Perhaps, Esmée, I understand more than you think.”
She gave a sharp, bitter laugh. “Oh, I doubt it.”
For a long moment, he was silent. “Esmée, you can feel useless, I have learned, even when you are living your own life,” he finally said. “And living in a place you do, ostensibly, belong.”
Her chin came up, and she looked at his faint reflection in the window. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He lifted one shoulder, and dropped his gaze. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I remember, occasionally, my boyhood in Scotland. I sometimes think that I never belonged there.”
“But you had a home and a family.”
“Oh, to be sure,” he admitted. “But feeling as if one belongs is not so simple as that, Esmée. It is…it is so much more. And bloody hard to explain.”
“I would like to understand,” she pressed, echoing his own words.
Alasdair looked as if he wished he had not spoken. “It is just that I wasn’t like anyone else in my family,” he said quietly. “Scots are a sober, serious-minded lot, as you well know, and my family was more serious and sober than most. But I…well, I was neither. I was full of myself—and full of mischief and adventure, too. Full of the devil, Granny MacGregor used to say. I could never be serious two minutes running. I drank and gambled my way through school, and went on to worse when I got out. My father was deeply disappointed in me, so I came here to London and stayed out of his sight. It seemed to suit all concerned.”
“Aye, but why?” she asked. “Young men must sow a few wild oats, and you were intelligent enough, I’ll wager.”
“I had a head for numbers,” he admitted. “A gift which I refused to cultivate, save at the gaming tables. But beyond that, I had no special talent, unless one counts charm and good looks. My father certainly didn’t. He spent his every waking moment wondering aloud why I couldn’t be more like my brother Merrick.”
“He wished you to be like Merrick?” Esmée was appalled.
“My father thought Merrick perfect,” he said quietly. “He was everything that I was not. He was not just intelligent, he was brilliant. Not just hardworking, but driven. He was the smart one. I was the charming one. In a family filled with brilliant, accomplished achievers, I definitely did not fi
t in.”
Again, Esmée thought of the arcane books filled with complex computations which she’d found in his old smoking parlor. They had been well thumbed, and heavily dog-eared. They had not even been written in English, but rather in French, and perhaps Dutch or German. Yet someone had read them; studied them almost obsessively, and she was relatively certain it wasn’t Merrick MacLachlan.
“Sometimes, Alasdair, I believe you take pains to appear charming and facile,” she remarked. “Sometimes, I think you try hard not to try hard.”
He looked at her ruefully. “I’m just making a point,” he said. “I spent the first fifteen years of my life convinced I’d been deposited on my parents’ doorstep by Gypsies or some such nonsense. Until Granny MacGregor informed me she’d delivered me herself, which shot my lovely little fantasy straight to hell.”
Esmée’s shoulders sagged. “Och, that sounds sad!” she said. “Sad for both you and your brother.”
“For both of us, indeed,” said Alasdair. “Merrick was never a child, whilst I was rarely anything else. I would not trade places with him. No, not even now.”
“Aye, you never go home to Scotland, do you?” she mused. “Someone—Wellings, perhaps—once told me that.”
He let his hand slip from her shoulder. “No, almost never,” he agreed. “I have never missed it. Not until…well, very recently. And now I wonder if there weren’t some aspects of that dutiful, industrious life which I might miss just a little, if I would but let myself. Indeed, it no longer seems so grim as I once thought it.”
There was a catch in his voice which Esmée had not heard before. She turned to face him, setting her back to the draperies, expecting that he would step away. But he did not. Instead he held her gaze intently with his golden eyes; eyes which had never looked more serious. Or more wounded. He did not touch her, though the strange heat between them made her wonder if he might. She held her breath, and waited.
He did not touch her. Instead, he set his hand against the wall behind her and leaned into her. “Tell me something,” he finally said, his voice oddly thick. “Are you happy here? Are you content, Esmée, with your choice?”